Letters | We have other priorities

CORRECTION: A March 3 letter to the editor from Carah Wertheimer of Boulder mistakenly carried the name Sarah Krcal of Lafayette. Krcal’s real letter appears in this issue, edited for length.

We have other priorities

(Re: “It’s not about the bike,” cover story, March 3.) Interesting article, but (there is always a but) with our nation and communities in such a desperate state of debt, I fail to see why anyone would be looking at ways to spend more taxpayer dollars.

I am not a biker (well, I am a Harley biker) but (again) a man of few words, and I would like to see more effort put into cleaning up the politics and getting this country out of debt so our children and grandchildren can look forward to a good life, not one screwed up by bad politicians.

That’s all. Ed Hoover/Georgetown

Booze stings are insulting

Youth alcohol enforcement officer Carlene Hofmann of the Boulder Police Department says in the Feb. 24 Boulder Weekly that, occasionally, even servers of alcohol who pass an underage alcohol sting “yell and curse at our operatives” (“Buzz Kill,” cover story). I wonder if this sort of reaction raises eyebrows of said operatives, especially since they just handed out a card congratulating the server for passing the compliance test.

Personally, I find the idea of government “congratulating” a citizen for compliance to be — well, arrogant at best. I would, in fact, recoil in disgust from such a creature, and, with some vehemence I’m sure, inform said person that I find her praise sickening, as well as her notion that I in any way adhere to her misguided, petty little brown-shirt belief system.

There is something vile about the self-righteousness of those who plan and carry out these stings, as well as their inability or unwillingness to discern between underage drinking and alcoholism, between underage drinking and the tragedies of a yahoo, nihilist anti-culture that kills people like Gordon Bailey, and finally the assault on working people who must be punished by the wise and virtuous state for making a mistake, for being distracted, for being momentarily stressed out and not quite up to scratch on the job.

There is something vile about the fact that the wisdom and virtue of the state is nothing more than mace, nightstick, gun and bars, the threat of which is brought to bear upon the poor soul who falls for its prank, all because a handful of comfortable, well-proffered bureaucrats like City Attorney Tom Carr take under age drinking “very seriously.”

This is a college town. It is only natural for a college student to go to a pub, as they have been doing for some thousand years, since Oxford University was founded.

And if simple tradition is too loathsome for the “very seriously taking” lawmakers and their thugs, then let us consider, again, that 18 is the age at which we dupe people into doing our dirty work in the Middle East. Scores of thousands dead in Iraq, thousands of “underage drinkers” killed and hideously maimed tending to the desires of their government, their watchdog, their protector.

And Tom Carr takes underage drinking very seriously.

Doug Richards/Boulder

Danish wrong on labor

I am writing to object to Paul Danish’s article titled “Revolution comes to the Midwest” (Danish Plan, Feb. 24). It contains extraordinary inaccuracies and distortions. As an educated community, we deserve much better. It’s one thing to be subjected to such drivel in a letter to the editor, but this garbage should never have seen print. The letter “Danish’s disinformation” (Letters, March 3) did an excellent job of detailing the problems. Please do a better job at the editing stage to prevent such clear disinformation from being published, at least not without a companion article or editorial comments that delineate the inaccuracies.

Gary Hardin/Boulder

The arts are essential

“If the brilliant are cut, we will progress,” seems somewhat of an oxymoron when uttered by government decision makers, unless of course, you’re speaking in terms of cutting gemstones. The arts are fundamental subjects that help shape brilliant, progressive, innovative minds for our nation’s future.

It is economically proven that cutting arts education reduces the future economic prowess of any given nation. Can we afford this in the face of other swiftly growing superpowers?

What historical icons could we have lost had they not learned art and music? Our most influential innovators have been artists and musicians, along with being engineers, technologists and inventors, for good reason. How many brilliant minds are we willing to let fall through the cracks that these cuts will make? We will lose future treasure.

Moreover, in the science of learning and neurological processes, learning the arts cannot be separated or deducted from learning math and science any more than the idea of pattern can be taken from learning the beauty of a conceptualized algorithm. It cannot be separated anymore than you cannot and would not want to take apart a brain, leaving it unwhole with parts of it labeled as less needed, as if the other parts could function fully or better without them.

Art and music are more than a mere dollar amount to be assessed and cut. This will affect the very people with the ability to shape our futures.

I challenge this as a theoretical quick-fix solution to a numbers spreadsheet, not a true solution in the long run.

Finally, on a personal note, please do not cut me. I am this person. I grew up with an education that provided me a pass with one music class throughout my entire middle school experience and one art class through my entire high school experience. There were no options provided by an organization as great as the NEA for me. I believe I speak for many.

I came from a blue-collar, but very artistically inclined, family. I grew up falling asleep under my mother’s piano bench as she composed music, loving puzzles and anything artistic. I grew up watching my father build furniture from scratch out of the creativity of his mind. Unfortunately, throughout high school I didn’t want to have anything to do with a lot of things provided without the connection of art and music. My parents could not articulate the importance of my subjects, let alone help me with them. I went through feeling out of place and like an oddball, without a connection.

What I wanted to draw was really pictorial quantum physics ideas, but there was no connection to explain what that was, no one to help me know that “art” and “music” are a part of learning science and math.

Today I am a single mother turning 30, continuing the mish-mesh education that I received as a young adult and trying to overcome the handicaps that cuts like these induced.

Please, please, do not make these cuts. I can only imagine how much more beneficial and how much less of a struggle, how much more of a difference I could have made had I the tools in my hands at the place of my education. Multiply this times the countless individuals this decision will affect.

Sarah Krcal/Lafayette

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Why is it always the same type of person rushing to the defense of the "arts"? This person comes off as awkwardy superior but then askes for understanding. If these are the type of people we are supporting through the arts allocations then I applaud their immediate removal.